Taft, this is probably nothing useful for the moment, but for future possible implementations, perhaps consider implementing a purchase entry field, so that like a transport for {X}, one could buy {X} repetitions or {X} hours. The first improves long term manage, the second would improve short term management. It was just something I was thinking about when trying to come up with an easier way for managing when you don't always have all the 'leaders' available.

On the flip side. It looks like my Diminished 2nd purge on Earthbreach has not expired as designed. (unless I am missing something obvious)

A DRed purge that was earning 75 per minute expired this morning so I put up a new clean purge there. We are now getting 325 per minute instead of just 250 for the one active purge.

Normal purges seem to be expiring cleanly but this DRed one on Earthbreach is lingering past its expiration. It is another 20 hours before I have any other DRed purges expiring to test if they linger as well.

_________________Cardinal of the Earthen OrderGovernor of Earthbreach, Olio, and Luz

Thoughts on this round? The fleet didn't manage to take any Skylands...and I'm kind of okay with that. You all did a stellar job corralling them and directing your effort. I know there were bugs related to DoT actions (Purge in particular), and there was some weirdness with the new way that players manipulate aggression, but overall I feel this round seemed to work fairly well.

Thoughts on this round? The fleet didn't manage to take any Skylands...and I'm kind of okay with that.

I, personally, am baffled by it. I completely expected them to take both Alpha 7 and Alpha 14, since we gave up on defending those, but the Fleet just... left them, sometimes with less than a day to go before they would have fallen.

Here's a timeline for Green:

June 24: The Fleet puts up Aggro on the Rim.

June 25: The Fleet starts putting up heavy inf on the Rim; they put up Aggro slightly inland (Volstoy and Gonk); Green cuts their power by a quarter.

June 26: The heaviest focus remains on the Rim, particularly Alpha 7; Green cuts their power by a third.

June 27: The Fleet attacks everything but the innermost parts of the Core; the Rim still gets the most heavily hit; the Fleet mines Tehras and Phillipia to up their power again.

June 28: Alpha 7 and Alpha 14 have taken too much damage to retain and are cut loose. Steppe comes under attack. We determine that at 56 M power and with tons of skylands under attack, "no presence" can mean up to 1 M a day, "low presence" is 1.1 M to 1.7 M, and "moderate presence" is 1.5 M to 3.5 M (pre-offenses).

June 29: The Fleet starts moving out of the North; Alpha 7 magically starts doing better despite still having moderate presence; Alpha 15 even more magically starts doing great as Fleet inf drops like a stone, although I didn't see any mining.

June 30: Alpha 7 is suddenly completely neutral; Alpha 14 is suddenly survivable, and we start working to keep both; Volstoy and Steppe get hit hard; Alpha 15 continues to be invisibly mined.

July 1: The Fleet moves off the Rim in practice, although they still have high aggression levels; Alpha 7 gets invisibly mined, clinching its safety; Volstoy and Steppe are the only ones really at risk.

July 2: Massive uses of abilities save Volstoy and Juliet from the brink of destruction, buying them the few extra hours they need to survive.

So we gave up on Alpha 7 and Alpha 14 on June 28, but two days later, Alpha 7 was completely fine and Alpha 14 was survivable. Alpha 15 was really baffling as we expected bleed from Alpha 4 to destroy it, but instead Fleet inf dropped like a rock without us seeing any mining. It was... very, very odd.

Also, a question: I see that the Fleet is still at full power, but at No or Low aggro/presence almost everywhere. Does that mean the Fleet isn't going to be putting up their 73 M inf/day, or will it just be evenly spread out over Skytopia?

Thoughts on this round? The fleet didn't manage to take any Skylands...and I'm kind of okay with that.

I, personally, am baffled by it. I completely expected them to take both Alpha 7 and Alpha 14, since we gave up on defending those, but the Fleet just... left them, sometimes with less than a day to go before they would have fallen.

I admit, given the pre-round posturing news-lines, that I expected them to be a bit more aggressive about things, even with how close Volstoy got. Mind you I've always been fond of the genre-savvy villains who are reasonably dangerous, and making them too effective would probably spoil everyone's fun.

I loved the round's overall structure. Having Valvia + 10 hidden targets and more limited resources was fun overall. One issue-it turns out that we didn't really have to use a lot of Signal Analysis to discover the targets because of the short duration. In many cases, the Fleet had to tip their hand as the deadline approached. Then again, if we had coordinated less well, we might have legitimately lost some skylands.

Kippei wrote:

.So we gave up on Alpha 7 and Alpha 14 on June 28, but two days later, Alpha 7 was completely fine and Alpha 14 was survivable. Alpha 15 was really baffling as we expected bleed from Alpha 4 to destroy it, but instead Fleet inf dropped like a rock without us seeing any mining. It was... very, very odd.

I think the Fleet tried (and failed) to take targets rather than settle for non-targets. Once Friday approached, the feint of presence on non-targets was deemed a waste of HF INF power and was re-focused on the real targets thus saving A7 and A14.

_________________Cardinal of the Earthen OrderGovernor of Earthbreach, Olio, and Luz

I think the Fleet tried (and failed) to take targets rather than settle for non-targets. Once Friday approached, the feint of presence on non-targets was deemed a waste of HF INF power and was re-focused on the real targets thus saving A7 and A14.

That's a good guess, though it assumes that Volstoy was an actual goal. The Fleet never did make their way to Jordan at all, despite being so close...

Round review, key topics and overall impression:I liked this round of the event. It had some hardship and some problems, goals and progression, and it ended with a bang. Combat finally joined the game, and most abilities became tools rather than 'magic powers.'

What I would most like to see improved are some tuning for ability management, some tuning of combat, and I'm hoping the trade routes dont fail again (can't think of a way to 'tune' that however.)

I would really *really* love to see a thread with perhaps tidbits of story to tie to the progression. I'm not necessarily talking full on RP story posts (although I'm anxiously awaiting something for that this round.) But have you considered writing up a few one or two liner 'quest text' like stories to go with certain events? Like a little tidbit of hint as to the what or why or how of each of the discovered HF targets would've been delicious. A few quips or snippets or taunts of/from the fleet [direct or 'intercepted comms'] to punctuate specific moments. The key thing I'm getting at here is that it feels like it should at least have a very minor tiny running story dialog, something we can get a wiff of every 2-3 days. I realize that taken as a whole, this can add up, but it doesn't need to give anything away or be tuned to be soem kind of integrated reveal. Some personality to change the HF from numbers and pie slices and make them feel like a foe.

Combat!It was exciting to finally get combat into the mix, and I enjoyed the improvement tremendously.I was a bit disappointed by the fact that the HFO reductions were not actually boosted over patrols as the text and spreadsheet have implied, but the sabo-bomb offset this loss.I was also a bit disappointed by the encounter increase, it didn't feel very different. I can say that looking at it *Looking* for a frequency increase, I believe I can see one, but this is all-out war now, and I feel like I should never be able to run a string of 10 combats without an HF legendary or even two.(obligatory i-want-carrierssssss comment)But those disappointments aside, I felt that combat became viable, and promoted a group effort, although so many weeks made combat non-viable that it feels like it's taking a lot of time to get people to appreciate the value and re-engage. I would like to see a bit of a boost, either continuing to boost HF legendary frequency or at least bump the HFO reduction to 1.5x or 2.0x if we're not going to use the 3.0x model from the spreadsheet. But this is a quibble to me, something that will further tune the feel and effect, and I think that combat is well progressed now.

Presence/Aggro/AbilitiesThis was a much smoother and more understandable progression this time (for the most part.) Fleet motion and progression was visible and at least somewhat interpretable, without giving anything away outright. The abilities for presence and aggro management felt much more natural and intuitive to me. A sense of impact and power, but not control.The south was strange; At first it seemed that the fleet didn't progress because olio held, but then g-rod got presence, and still a11 and jordan never even really got touched. Jordan sat at *zero* HF inf. I just don't understand how this happened.It seems like there was a presence cap on non-targets? We had Getty at ...bzzt... aggro for the majority of the event, and it refused to budge above High presence after it settled in. This is fine if it's supposed to be that way, but it was unexpected.The fleets slimming and focusing on targets towards the end was also intuitive and natural.Overall I really enjoyed the changes in abilities, it felt like a strong maturation iteration of the features. Management and maintenance of them is still a bit tricky with the DR effect, the overlap and the need to time things so precisely to maintain them, with such a distinct penalty for timing it wrong in some cases was a bit of a bother. I'd like to see some improvement along the lines of the public discussion.

HFOThe 25% recovery rate worked well when it was finally working, haha. I'd have to say that if we hadn't had the sabo bomb, we would've been hurting a lot more, and that perhaps there's no need to artificially jump the HFO next round like last time (the set-to-60mil.) The 25% recovery rate is a very fast but manageable progression that seems to match the fleets growth to some degree. I think it'd be nice to have a similar effect in the next round for initiation, without having to rely upon suites of sabotage.I would love to see combat be a bit more effective, since the total output in kill did not appear to go up very much even with a spawn boost, but it did *feel* effective at list.The dam the source HFO reduction amount is not really very appealing, although dam was just not too much of a priority with the lack of supplies making resources scarce this round. I'm not necessarily saying dam needs to change, just giving you feedback. If we used a dam, it was for the inf, not the HFO reduction which would've just been a minor bonus to us.

ResourcesUnrelated to the event proper, but the collapse/saturation of trade routes was unbelievably painful. It's important to note that you cannot run out of WF production due to market factors.

GoalsThe skyland protection racket was an interesting focus, it provided a good prioritization effect, and gave something to dig for. Will these priority targets still be around as a function in future rounds? Same targets?

Thoughts on this round? The fleet didn't manage to take any Skylands...and I'm kind of okay with that. You all did a stellar job corralling them and directing your effort. I know there were bugs related to DoT actions (Purge in particular), and there was some weirdness with the new way that players manipulate aggression, but overall I feel this round seemed to work fairly well.

Bugs aside I think it went very well, the HF seemed like a real ( butreasonable) threat and our powers to manipulate and hinder them seem much more effective and strategic, without any of them just outright slaughtering the fleet.As far as powers go though, I kind of think the 'buff' skills could use a longer timer (and matching cost), even with the 36 hour duration I got tired of having to reuse Word of Mouth.

Will we get an opportunity to attack? We've been on the defense since the game began; War in the Pacific doesn't get thrilling until the player goes on offense, and we could use a little of that.

This is like a game where we never lose the Philippines and the Japanese never touch Truk. It gets a little repetitive and grindy after so many weeks.

_________________Pilot-in-Command, Our Chief Export Is Violence IIIIncarnation of IndustryAngels' wings are icing over, McDonnell Douglas olive drab. They bear the names of our sweethearts, and the captain smiles, as we crash.

A benefit of the Diminishing Returns that I really liked was being able to see what had already happened on a skyland. It made the game slightly more sporadic and understandable since you didn't have to do as much checking of the fifty skyland pages, and could find out what had happened while you were away.

It would be nice if Fleet powers got the same treatment. It would help explain why Alpha 15 lost dramatic amounts of Fleet inf two days in a row, and why Tehras and Phillipia look like this this morning:

Amira Navaras wrote:

Will we get an opportunity to attack? We've been on the defense since the game began; War in the Pacific doesn't get thrilling until the player goes on offense, and we could use a little of that.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was in the works; but first, we have to lose enough skylands to the Fleet for us to have something to attack...

Will we get an opportunity to attack? We've been on the defense since the game began; War in the Pacific doesn't get thrilling until the player goes on offense, and we could use a little of that.

This is like a game where we never lose the Philippines and the Japanese never touch Truk. It gets a little repetitive and grindy after so many weeks.

We got to 'attack' Olio and Alpha 7 when they were taken, but until now Philli and Tehras were always completely beyond the point of potential recovery. I have no problem with the fleet being strong enough to take an island for a while as long as their lead isn't instantaneous and insurmountable...

1) Being able to try and force the HF into more strategic venues was definitely interesting. Couple that with the ability to toss blockades, and it resulted in very entertaining times, at least, for me, as Crimson Leadership. I was particularly amused by the massive feedback loop created with the Tinkspoit group.

2) Combat being back: +++

3) WHERE MAH CARRIERS?

4) Perhaps the implementation of a timer on the Diminished Returns? IE: If I use Blockade with three hours remaining on the previous blockade, it would be nice for it to take the DR for the remaining three hours, and then once the previous blockade drops off, it would be super useful for the remaining Blockade to go to full power. I feel like this has probably been discussed before, as I'm getting the oddest sense of deja vu while posting this...

5) Interesting bits of coordination. I didn't really feel like any of our particular abilities were useless, or under utilized. At various points, I think everyone used everything. I know we still focused more on blockade, but Defy was used a few times, as was Dam.

6) The sense of urgency for locating and defending targets was also good. It made this round feel as if we had more of an important goal than just stand there and take the incoming.

_________________"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."-Sir Winston Churchill

It would be nice if Fleet powers got the same treatment. It would help explain why Alpha 15 lost dramatic amounts of Fleet inf two days in a row, and why Tehras and Phillipia look like this this morning:*picture!!11!one!*

If I remember correctly, back when the HF originally took Teh and Phil, Taft mentioned that he'd overdone it a bit (they had massively outrun us and there was literally no hope of recapture without an extended siege and significant resources devoted to the cause, even compared to the recapture of A7) and said something about fixing the situation. I assume he got around to doing so, hence the massive influence drop there.

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